A week or two ago, patteeu and I were rehashing some of the accomplishments and disasters of the Bush administration.

It's been four years since the guy was in office, and seemingly a year or two since I'd had an in-depth conversation about his Presidency.

This was a week or so after I offered my extensive list of accomplishments of first-term Obama, and I know I'm not exactly the audience Bush was playing to, but if you had to carve out a list of things Bush had done over two terms, it is truly striking exactly how shitty his Presidency was.

Lost the popular vote in his first election.

Largest domestic terrorist strike on American soil in American history.

Two rounds of huge tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy that now even Republicans on this board want to see gone for everybody.

Medicare Part D, not altogether a bad program but exploded the deficit.

The beginning of the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, with an undersized troop presence.

The war in Iraq. Yeah.

A massive, federal expansion of education policy -- literally called No Child Left Behind.

The deficit is the fiscal year difference between what the United States Government (Government) takes in from taxes and other revenues, called receipts, and the amount of money the Government spends, called outlays. The items included in the deficit are considered either on-budget or off-budget.

You can think of the total debt as accumulated deficits plus accumulated off-budget surpluses. The on-budget deficits require the U.S. Treasury to borrow money to raise cash needed to keep the Government operating. We borrow the money by selling securities like Treasury bills, notes, bonds and savings bonds to the public.

The Treasury securities issued to the public and to the Government Trust Funds (Intragovernmental Holdings) then become part of the total debt. For information about the deficit, visit the Financial Management Service web site to view the Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government (MTS).